1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for recording on a recording medium and a method for controlling the recording process. More particularly, the present invention relates to a recording apparatus for recording on a recording medium under control based on the data signal level, and a method for controlling the recording process.
2. Background of the Invention
An optical disc may have a recording capacity two to three orders of magnitude larger than a magneto-optical disc, and permits higher speed access than with a tape-shaped recording medium. Since the optical disc also has such merits as high durability and contact-free data recording/reproduction, it has recently being employed in increasing numbers.
There are several types of optical discs, such as a read-only optical disc having a read-only area with data recorded as pits, conforming to a standard CD (Compact Disc) format, referred to hereinafter as a CD-DA format, a magneto-optical disc, in the form of a magneto-optical recording medium having a recording/reproducing area conforming to a CD-MO format as an extension format of the CD-DA format, and a hybrid disc having both the read-only area with data recorded as pits and a recording/reproducing area having a magneto-optical recording layer in which the data is recorded on or reproduced from the magneto-optical recording layer.
If, in a data recording/reproducing apparatus for recording data on a disc-shaped recording medium, such as a magneto-optical disc or a hybrid disc, the recording data become useless data during recording, the recording is discontinued by a manual operation. If a song or other audio program are to be recorded from a CD to a magneto-optical disc, the recording by the magneto-optical disc recording/reproducing apparatus is discontinued by a manual operation after the end of reproduction by the CD player.
In a disc-shaped recording medium, such as an optical disc or a magneto-optical disc, there are provided a main data recording area for recording main data, such as audio data or speech data or general data, and a control data recording area for recording control data.
In the data recording/reproducing apparatus for the disc-shaped recording medium, the pre-recorded area and the non-recorded recordable area are controlled by control data recorded in the control data recording area. For example, in the optical disc conforming to the CD-DA format, the recording start address information and the recording end address information are sequentially recorded for all of the program data in a lead-in region as a table-of-contents (TOC) information indicating the recording position and the recording contents of the data region.
The present Assignee has already proposed a recording and/or reproducing apparatus for digitally recording and/or reproducing audio signals or music signals or the like using an optical disc of substantially 64 mm in diameter housed within a disc cartridge. This type of the optical disc may be classified into a read-only optical disc, a recordable disc such as a magneto-optical disc and a hybrid disc having both the read-only region and the recordable region. In the magneto-optical disc capable of data recording and reproduction, the program region and the U-TOC region (user TOC region) are provided in the recordable region, and the TOC data indicating the recording position and the recording contents of the program region, referred to herein as U-TOC data, are recorded in the U-TOC region.
With such disc recording/reproducing apparatus, the recording is discontinued by a manual operation. As a result, if only songs or programs, such as audio or music data, are designated using the program reproduction function of the CD player to be recorded, and a song or program smaller in data quantity than the capacity of the recording side is reproduced, a silent recorded portion, such as a portion recorded zero-level audio data, is produced on the end after the end of the reproduction on the source side. In order to prevent the silent portion from being recorded on end, it is necessary to watch the state of the source and to terminate recording as soon as the reproduction of the source side comes to a close.
On the other hand, if recording is not discontinued by a manual operation, the silent portion continues to be recorded up to the end of the recordable region, such that, unless the silent portion is re-registered as a vacant region, recording cannot be made in succession to the recorded portion.